On September 1st at 6:00 pm, the Hawks took on the Devil’s Lake Firebirds at our home field and recorded the first win in program history. After winning the coin toss, the Hawks selected to receive the ball in the first half. The first drive sent a message to the Firebirds because Dylan Johnson blasted through the defense All the way until he scored the first touchdown of the game, but it didn’t end there for the rest of the game both Xavier Burrow and Dylan Johnson put on a strong running game. Even though the running game was strong it didn’t stop Tayler Stefonowicz from connecting with his receivers for some big plays. Israel Bauer had an amazing catch to put the Hawks in the red zone where Dylan Johnson scored a short touchdown again. Like with the running the big passes continued as Jaxon Narum and Gavin Olson connected with Stefonowicz for significant yardage.
Like last week with the trick play the Hawks had another one up their sleeve. After running through the Firebirds, the coaches pulled out a reverse play to Gavin Olson where he ran it all the way home. As much as the offense was great, the defense also showed up to play. Within the first few drives the Hawks forced a fumble and ended up recovering it, and later in the game Axel Anderson had a beautiful interception giving the Hawks a good chance to score. With all these positives it pushed the Hawks to their first ever win.
Weeks 1 and 2 Recap
With the season opener on Friday, August 18th, the Horace Hawks took on the number one ranked single-A football team, Fargo North Spartans. While we lost the game, there are still many improvements from last year where we played a full varsity season without any seniors. The head coach for the Horace Hawks Harvey McMahon, sees a lot of improvement with the team coming together and believing that we belong in this division and that we will “come together and put together some competitive games.”
When the Hawks played the Dickinson Midgets in week two, our defense showed that we can compete and shut out Dickinson from scoring in the second half. Defensive coordinator Ryan Boyer says, “We had a lot of unselfish plays in that game. Our defensive linemen maintained gap responsibility… [and] we got under blocks to allow our linebackers to make plays.” Additionally, Coach McMahon said, he really felt defensively that we, “found our stride and proved we can compete this year.”
Offensively, the Hawks had some great plays. For example, the coaches called a trick play in the second quarter setting up a touchdown by #34 Dylan Johnson. The Quarterback 9, Taylor Stefonowicz. threw the ball to slot receiver #3 Gavin Olson, who then heaved it to #1 Lukas Holsing for a gain of over 50 yards. Three plays later Johnson ran it in for the first Hawks touchdown of the season. Not to mention #5 Xavier Burrow had several long runs that showcased Horace’s speed. While they were called back because of penalties, the team is only one step away from putting it all together and adding more points to the board.
This is only the beginning, and many more games and seasons will come. This is only the second-ever varsity season, and there’s no doubt it will mark the beginning of something great and something extraordinary. Just by looking at these games, we can see already a massive improvement from last year, and if that isn’t enough to prove that we can compete then I don’t know what will.